Workout Wednesday: Zumba

I recently discovered Zumba and I absolutely love it!! I'll be honest, I would see women working out in the group exercise room during Zumba and it didn't look like that hard of a work out. When I work out, I want to sweat..that to me means I had a good work out.

I never really thought about doing Zumba until one Saturday morning. I had just gotten to the gym and was not really in the mood to work out and decided to try out Zumba and see what it was about. WOW! I not only left sweaty but I was so sore the next day. I did not expect that to happen.

The dancer in me loves the class because I love learning choreography. Every class I've been to it has been different moves which I love..it helps keep me on my toes! The class never stops too so it's fantastic cardio.

My sister gave me the Wii Zumba game for Christmas and I play it all the time. It's nice to have the game now because I don't always want to battle the New Year's resolution people at the gym after work.

How many of you Zumba?

My Fitness Pal

One of my goals for the New Year was to start eating a little bit healthier. I'd like to think I can eat like a 15 year old boy all the time, but I know one day it might all catch up to me, and I'd rather not end up on the Biggest Loser one day.

Even though I work out 6 times a week, I still think that gives me an invitation to eat whatever I want. This year I'm trying to cut back on the carbs and sweets I eat. If I could, I would live off of mashed potatoes and cupcakes. Instead of stuffing my face with the bad stuff, I'm trying to replace it with more fruits and veggies. It's been a bit of a struggle but I'm slowly, but surely, making progress. 

One thing I've never done and I know I should be doing is counting my calories. I've always heard that if you write down your daily calories, you'll learn to eat better. Well, at the start of the month, both B and I started to use the My Fitness Pal app on our phones. Basically you input your weight, how much weight you want to lose, your workout activity and your daily activity level. Then you'll find out how many calories a day you can eat based on those fields. Each day you put in what you're eating for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks as well as putting in your daily workout (which means you get more calories to eat for the day). 

I learned pretty fast that I'm eating a bit more than I should so I've been slowly learning how to eat better portion sizes with the help of this app. The number of calories I should be having per day don't take me very far! I've had some afternoons where my tummy is growling at me!! And it's amazing to find out the number of calories in items. For instance, I wanted to splurge this past weekend while watching Miss America so I really wanted to get a piece of cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory. After finding out the piece had 1143 CALORIES, I said no and went for a 350 cal cupcake instead. 

The big thing I've learned so far is how to eat in smaller portions. Normally I would clear my plate if we went out to dinner but now I know I should probably only eat half of it since portions have grown so much especially at restaurants. 

I don't know how long we'll keep up with counting our calories but it's been good for us both so far. How many of you count calories? Do you find it helpful? 

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a safe and fabulous New Year! Mr. B and I aren't fans of New Year's so we spent the night at home cuddled on the couch with our favorite pup!

As always, I've made some New Year's resolutions and I'm really going to try to stick to them this year. Here are a few things I'm hoping to get accomplished in 2012.

• Read more!
• When I was younger one of my most favorite things to do was read. Once college started, reading for fun went right down the drain. I'm hoping to read at least one book per month. I think if I get into the routine of reading before I go to bed, that might bring back my interest in it. 
• Save more money
• If it were up to me, I'd go shopping every day and always have a new outfit to wear. As realistic as I'd like to make that to be, I probably should save more and spend less. We'll see how well I actually do on this one. 
• Working out more
• Lately I fell off the working out bandwagon. Waking up at 5 am can be super hard to get to the gym but I know I just need to get back into my daily routine. Along with working out, I'll be running two half marathons later this year which I'm anxious about. I also have a goal to eat less sweets. I love love love to bake and if it were up to me, I'd eat dessert after EVERY meal. I'm really trying to cut back on this habit! I also want to start getting back into yoga. I used to go once a week at my gym, but they cancelled the class I used to go to and their other classes just don't fit my schedule. I have a few yoga DVD's so I really want to force myself to do it at least once a week. I know it'll be good for my flexibility and stretching, especially with my half marathon training.

What are your New Year's goals?!

A few of my favorite things....

I wanted to start a new lil mini series about some of my new favorite things. One of those would be the Clarisonic Mia that I got for Christmas from my parents. I asked for the Mia because it's smaller than the other Clarisonic (the name escapes me right now..I think it's the Clarisonic Plus?!) Anywhos, the larger Clarisonic is meant for exfoliation your whole body in addition to your face. I'd rather not use something on my body and face, just doesn't seem sanitary to me. Plus, with the smaller one, since I travel a fair amount this was the perfect size. It comes with a charger, traveling case, Philosophy Purity face wash and two brush heads.

I've only been using it a week but have noticed a HUGE difference in my skin. My face looks much brighter than before and my nose (which always has clogged pores) has completely cleared up. I'm anxious to see how this will help with the breakouts I get on my face. Every few weeks or so, I breakout and get a few pimples and I'm hoping this might be the solution to my problem.

It helps that it's in leopard too..I mean who wouldn't want to clean their face with something that has leopard on it?!

Keep checking back over the next week or so..I'll be sharing some of my other favorite things and the things Santa brought me too!